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Books : Science Fiction & Fantasy : Authors, A-Z : J : Joyce, Graham
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'Leningrad Nights' / 'How the Other Half Lives': "Leningrad Nights", "How the Other Half Lives" Bk.1
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Short story collections are often hit-and-miss affairs but not so with Foursight, which features four superlative and riveting novellas by big name writers. James Lovegrove, Graham Joyce Michael Marshall Smith and Kim Newman have, under the skilful reigns of editor Peter Crowther, created a stunning and varied collection of werid but wonderful tales. Such is the nature of short fiction, where a lot happens, or at least seems to happen, in a relatively short space, it would be impossible to convey the plots of all here but it would be fair to say that all stunning examples of how good condensed fiction can be. Graham Joyce kicks off the proceedings with the achingly good "Lenningrad Nights", the story of a young boy facing his own personal battle in his war torn homeland as he becomes the surrogate father to a prostitute's baby. The lyrical prose and sharp characterisation mark this as probably the best of the collection with a denouement that sits comfortably with all that has gone before. "How the Over Half Lives" by James Lovegrove holds its own until the finale, which descends, unfortunately, into a rather too easy "we all learned something today" scenario and the main character reacts in a rather implausible way, given everything he based his life around in the previous pages. That aside, this is also a great tale, with an ingenious rat and some marvellous descriptions. The reader is plunged into the rapidly eroding world of the central character and you feel yourself sweating as he does, panicking when he does and genuinely believing your life is out of control. Michael Marshall Smith's entry is of course, the more off-beat of the four with a wonderful plot and plenty of genuine surprises packed into its tightly woven plot. Almost like Men in Black but less warm and sentimental, "The Vaccinator" mixes Smith's unique and often darkly comic style with many well worn sci-fi threads and produces something truly special. The collection is topped off with Kim Newman's "Andy Warhol's Dracula", a seriously swinging tale that takes a fond swipe at the decade everyone loves to remember. Like some deranged pop art, it is full of colour and large characters and, also like pop art, you can seemingly spend hours in its company. All in all, a hugely entertaining collection--four dark and twisted journeys that entertain, but more importantly explore what it means to live. Regardless of our country, our race, our age or social status, we can never be anything more than what we are--human. --Jonathan Weir
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Originally published 1997-98 as six slim volumes aimed at younger readers, these novellas now appear as an omnibus edition. Their shared setting is the evolved Web of 2027, a near-infinite interactive virtual reality whose potential for appalling booby-traps is exploited by the Sorceress. This aged woman plans to grab computerised immortality at others' expense, and reappears as the villain of each story. Baxter's GulliverZone features a VR theme park based on Gulliver's Travels, with the nice idea of equal rights for computer viruses; Bowkett's Dreamcastle is a more conventional D&D-style adventure game; Brown's Untouchable sees the Web from the viewpoint of a monstrously exploited Indian pariah-caste girl; Joyce's Spiderbite revolves around the secret world domination plans of the "Church of Planetology" which plants controlling "engrams" in young innocents' minds (hello, L. Ron Hubbard!); Hamilton's Lightstorm moves out into the real world of corporate ecological vandalism; and Furey wraps up the linked stories and finally deals with the arch-villain in Sorceress. There are no real duds ... but extra marks to Brown for setting and poignancy, Joyce for ingenuity of plot and payoff, and Hamilton for thoughtfulness about how even good guys may want to project a misleading Web persona. --David Langford
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